There are instances in a Restricted Local Area Network environment, such as a captive portal, where it is necessary to access a resource from the Internet in order to activate or use a service that is offered in the Restricted Local Area Network. One example of such a situation is where the user requires a smart-phone application for accessing and logging into the Restricted Local Area Network. Without access to the Internet, the user cannot download the smart-phone application itself. Another example is a video application for viewing In-Flight Entertainment Content, such as movies, onboard an aircraft. Internet access is not needed to view the movie, since the movie resides on an In-Flight Entertainment server resident on the aircraft. However, Internet access is typically necessary for the passenger to be authenticated and to download the application (hosted for example on an Internet-based server) that is used to view the movies on the In-Flight Entertainment server, which is located on the aircraft.
The captive portal environment exists where there is only a single available communication service that is available to the user. Examples of a captive portal environment is on board an aircraft in flight, where the passengers have no access to any communication services, other than the aircraft resident wireless Local Area Network, or a hotel, where the resident wired/wireless Local Area Network serves the hotel rooms. The captive portal typically operates by forcing an HTTP client on a Restricted Local Area Network to access a special Web page (usually for authentication purposes) before using the Internet in the normal manner. A captive portal turns a Web browser into an authentication device. This is done by intercepting all packets, regardless of the source address or port, which are transmitted by the user's communication device until the user opens a browser and tries to access the Internet. At that time, the browser is redirected to a special Web page which may require authentication and/or payment, or may simply display an acceptable network use policy and require the user to agree to the policy before continued Internet access is permitted.
One problem with such a captive portal Internet access process is that once the user is connected to the Internet, the usage of the Local Area Network to browse the Internet is unconstrained. In an environment where Local Area Network bandwidth is limited or the duration of the user's communication session is an issue or the overall magnitude of the data downloading is a factor, some sort of data access policy is required. Limiting the browsing capability of the user to authorized sites is problematic, since the user can open links from inside of the initial Web page or hop to other sites, and an attempt to manage the list of permitted sites represents a dynamically changing data communications management problem. In addition, in cases where the Internet access is temporary, to only retrieve an application for use exclusively in the Restricted Local Area Network, there is no ability in existing systems to ensure that the Internet access is truly temporary or limited to retrieving the selected application for use on the Restricted Local Area Network.
Therefore, there presently is no reliable, effective, cost-efficient way of delivering temporary captive portal Internet access to a selected Web site to only retrieve an application for use exclusively in the Restricted Local Area Network.